In brief: Everybody's favorite love-to-detest space sim, Star Citizen, is yet undergoing active, expensive development. But terminal year, the game managed to hit $300 million in revenue from crowdfunding solitary. Yous might expect that growth to tiresome, but information technology has continued to skyrocket. As of writing, the highly aggressive sim has raised an astonishing $404.7 1000000 from send and cosmetic sales, direct pledges, and more than.

That's a massive sum for any game, let lonely a mostly-crowdfunded project with total creative independence on the part of developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG). Unfortunately, Star Denizen's tremendous fiscal success has as well led to plenty of controversies for the studio.

Over the years, many players accept accused the game of being a scam for failing to release despite 10 years of full production. Even those that relish the game will acknowledge that it's buggy and missing many features.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the negativity, CIG continues to forge alee on Star Citizen and publish regular evolution blogs and progress updates. The game likewise has a "progress tracker" roadmap, which seems to item work allocation upwards until Q3 2023.

Merely by taking one expect at said roadmap, it's admittedly no surprise to me that the game has already taken ten years to develop, without a clear end in sight. The sheer volume of features and the level of graphical and audio fidelity CIG is looking to implement boggles the mind. One characteristic, called "Salvage T0," is tentatively scheduled for release in Q2 2022 -- it seeks to let players strip and repair their ships by hand.

Some other feature, confirmed for release this quarter, will overhaul the game's physics engine, and yet another will let players to traverse their environment in goose egg-g using just their easily to button and pull themselves about.

Whether y'all believe CIG can actually deliver all of its promised features or not, it's articulate that the studio is keen to keep working until the money runs out. Judging by the game's decade-long history, we don't expect that to happen someday soon. Every bit we've pointed out in the past, the studio is somehow able to sell ships and ship packs that easily cost hundreds of dollars. Indeed, the UEE Exploration 2950 "Package" comes in at $i,100 and is the only way to obtain the "Anvil Carrack" vessel.

Regardless, I am even so rooting for the game to succeed. While I will not be buying it myself, and wouldn't necessarily suggest others to do and then, if CIG is able to achieve its dream, that tin can just be a good matter for consumers. Hopefully, it won't take another ten years, though.

If you lot'd like to run across how far along the team is, there'due south some good news. Until December one, y'all can try out Star Citizen for free as office of its latest "Free Fly" period. These events happen pretty oftentimes, so if you miss the boat this time, don't fret.